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Authors: Tim Newark

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“No, sir.”
Dewey switched tack and got Luciano to admit he owned part of a restaurant on Fifty-second Street and Broadway for six months, eight years previously, and had merely forgotten this one legitimate occupation. Dewey asked him about his claim that he once worked as a chauffeur. Did he drive around Joe Masseria—Joe the Boss?
“No.”
“You were a bodyguard for him, weren’t you, for some time?”
“Oh, no—never a bodyguard for anyone.”
He denied that he had ever told any policemen that he ever was born in Italy—five times he denied his birthplace. At this
point, Dewey had a question read out by the judge to underline Luciano’s avoidance of the truth.
“I just want to know your philosophy about this. Now if you are under oath, you always tell the truth under any circumstance. Is that it?”
“I am telling the truth now, Mr. Dewey.”
The question was read out again.
“I didn’t say I told the truth all the time, but now I am telling the truth.”
Luciano admitted that the only occasion he lied under oath was about his occupation to get a pistol permit so he could carry a gun around the streets of New York. Dewey exposed further his elastic understanding of the truth by revisiting his arrest for dope peddling in 1923.
“Isn’t it a fact that on June 2, 1923, you sold a two-ounce box of narcotics known as Diacetylmorphine hydrochloride to John Lyons, an informer for the Secret Service of the United States?”
“I don’t know who they were,” said Luciano, “but I was arrested, and if I was charged with them, that I didn’t do.”
“Didn’t you sell the dope to John Lyons on that date?”
“No.”
Luciano continued to deny selling dope to the same agent three days later, but did not deny being arrested.
“Isn’t it a fact that in your apartment were found two onehalf ounce packages of morphine, and two ounces of heroin and some opium?”
“No, sir.”
“Isn’t it a fact that thereafter you gave to Joseph Van Bransky, a narcotic agent in charge in New York City, a statement that at 163 Mulberry Street they would find a whole trunk of narcotics?”
Levy interceded to object to this line of questioning, but Luciano accepted that that was true.
“You’re just a stool pigeon,” pushed Dewey. “Isn’t that it?”
“I told them what I knew.”
“You mean you went to those men and, like a big-hearted citizen, you told them where they could find the trunk?”
“Something like that, maybe … what I want to know is where the hell does all this come from?”
Luciano was clearly rattled.
“And you still say you were not engaged in the business of narcotics in the year 1923?” persisted Dewey.
“I was picked up for it, but I was not—I didn’t sell them.”
Further holes were picked in Luciano’s testimony by references to phone calls that he denied making but that were a matter of record. Dewey then wanted to know the kind of men he associated with.
“Do you know a Vito?”
“I know of a Vito, yes.”
“Vito who?”
“Vito Genovese.”
“What is his business?”
“I think he has got a paper business,” said Luciano.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in maybe seven months, six or seven months.”
“Isn’t it a fact that he is out of the state of New York?”
“I am in jail,” said the defendant. “I couldn’t tell you if he is around the corner or he is in China.”
Luciano also admitted to knowing Louis Lepke, as well as Bugsy Siegel, who lived at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“I know Bug Siegel having—putting on a couple of shows, and he was interested in a dog track in Atlantic City.”
“You were down at his room or he was up in your room at the Waldorf pretty constantly, weren’t you?”
“Well, he used to come up to my room, and I went down to his room, yes, a couple of times.”
“Almost every day?”
“Not every day, no.”
Dewey turned his attention to the ride of 1929, when Luciano
was kidnapped and beaten, and got Luciano to admit that he lied under oath to the grand jury about his circumstances at the time. He also admitted he hadn’t paid any income tax in that year or the year following. It was not until 1935 that he had got around to filing late returns to the federal government for the previous six years. It was echoes of Al Capone’s prosecution for tax evasion.
Luciano explained he never kept any books of record of his income, but he swore that his net income in 1929 was $15,000; in 1930 it was $16,500. In 1931 and 1932, he paid tax on an income of $20,000, although he had not the slightest idea what his gross income or expenses were. He paid the government on the basis of his conscience. He could only guess at his income in the following years.
Luciano’s cross-examination by Dewey ended on this financial note at 6:36 P.M.—after four hours of hostile questioning. Levy, Luciano’s defense attorney, immediately stood up to get the mobster to explain some of the reasons behind his secrecy and evasion.
“Now, Mr. Lucania, about the use, firstly, of the names Charles Ross and Charles Lane. Was there any particular reason you used either of those names at the Waldorf?”
“Some people, I didn’t want them to know.”
“A little louder, please,” said the judge.
“I says some people, I didn’t want them to know where I live.”
Luciano explained that he had been taken on the ride in 1929 because some people were extorting money from him under threats and he promised to give them $10,000. He admitted to lying about this to the grand jury at the time. It was not a good end to his testimony. His constant twisting and turning of the truth all came across as very suspicious and, on several occasions Luciano had exposed himself as a relentless and barefaced liar. Newspapers proclaimed Dewey the winner of the courtroom duel. “Dewey Riddles Lucky on Stand,” said one headline.
Having failed to present the other defendants in a good light and having failed to knock down the testimony placed before them, some of the defense attorneys used their summing up to attack Dewey. By giving immunity to the prostitutes and pimps paraded before the jury, the special prosecutor was allowing them to go about their illegal business. This was true, but Dewey had already dealt with that, explaining that it was necessary to get bad people to testify against much worse criminals. He admired their bravery in speaking up.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you ever dealt with sheer, stark, paralyzing terror?” asked Dewey in his closing argument. “You heard Danny Brooks testify that he asked me to put him in some jail where he would not be murdered.
“Then there was Thelma Jordan,” he continued, “who was asked by a defense lawyer why she did not tell her story when first questioned in my office. She said, ‘I’ll tell you why—because I’ve seen girls cut and burned when they squeal.’ They knew they’d made a mistake when they asked that question. They never asked it again.”
It was a dramatic end to a sensational trial. The jury retired for a night of deliberations. Early on Sunday June 7, they gave their verdict.
“How say you, gentlemen of the jury,” asked Judge McCook. “Do you find the defendant Luciano guilty or not guilty on count number one?”
“Guilty,” said the foreman.
Luciano betrayed no emotion. His lawyers had already told him he would be found guilty.
“How say you as to the defendant Luciano? Is he guilty or not guilty on count number two?”
“Guilty.”
And so it went on for all sixty-two counts of compulsory prostitution.
Then it was the other defendants’ turn—Thomas Pennochio,
Dave Petillo, James Fredericks, Abe Heller, Jesse Jacobs, Benny Spiller, Meyer Berkman, and Ralph Liguori. They were found guilty on all counts.
That afternoon, Dewey issued a statement to the press.
“This, of course, was not a vice trial,” he said. “It was a racket prosecution. The control of all organized prostitution in New York by the convicted defendants was one of their lesser rackets. The four bookers of women who pleaded guilty were underlings. The prostitution racket was merely the vehicle by which these men were convicted. It is my understanding that certain of the top-ranking defendants in this case, together with the other criminals under Lucania, have gradually absorbed control of the narcotic, policy, loan shark and Italian lottery syndicates, the receipt of stolen goods and certain industrial rackets.”
Dewey ended by thanking his legal assistants and police colleagues for all their hard work throughout the case.
“These men have worked on this case for many months, most of them sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and on a number of occasions as long as sixty hours without sleep.”
The conviction of Lucky Luciano was a landmark in U.S. legal history as it was the first against a major organized crime figure for anything other than tax evasion. It was the pinnacle of Dewey’s crusade against the underworld. Mayor La Guardia joined in the praise of the young attorney and said it revealed the role of corrupt law-keepers in the rule of the Mob. He said Luciano “could never have run his rackets without the knowledge if not the connivance of some of the very people entrusted with law enforcement. I recommend that at least six public officials commit hara-kiri.”
Eleven days later, on June 18, Judge McCook handed out the sentences.
“You are responsible in law and morals for every foul and cruel deed with accompanying elements of extortion performed by the band of codefendants,” he told Luciano. “I am not here to
reproach you, but, since there appears no excuse for your conduct nor hope for your rehabilitation, to administer adequate punishment.”
He sentenced him to thirty to fifty years behind bars. This pronouncement rocked Luciano. He was not expecting such a heavy sentence. He was, in effect, being sent to prison for the rest of his life. His codefendants got lesser sentences: Tommy the Bull and Jimmy Fredericks got twenty-five years each; Little Davie Petillo twenty-five to forty; and Ralph Liguori got seven and a half to fifteen years. It seemed like it was the end of Luciano’s criminal career.
 
 
The trial might have been over, but the Dewey prosecuting machine kept on gathering evidence against Luciano for the anticipated appeal. A letter dated June 3, 1936, directed the crime crusader toward a notorious house of prostitution at 83 Genung Street, Middletown, Orange County, New York. Called Madges, it was so well known in the area that local politicians frequently joked about it in public and even used it to entertain business associates.
Madges had been around for twenty-six years, said the local informant, and was very well protected by the local police and a few state troopers. In fact, those state troopers were on a “free list” who got taken care of by the girls in the brothel and even recommended out-of-towners to it. Local bartenders and taxi drivers all got a commission for sending customers to Madges. It was a thriving business and seemed immune to prosecution, as anyone of any consequence in Middletown was on its “free list.”
Such open corruption may well have appalled Dewey, but what really interested him was the informant’s description of who was behind Madges. “For the last few years, this house has been ‘controlled’ by a syndicate of Luciano … . [It] is part of the ‘loop,’ from New York to Toledo, Ohio. The sale of girls routes
through the chain of a Toledo Mob, which is also a subsiduary [
sic
] of the Luciano enterprises.”
The letter explained that Madges was managed by Bat Nelson, “who has an interest in Madges place and represents Luciano.”
The extent of Luciano’s tax mess was confirmed by Tax Field Supervisor Nathan H. Mitchell. On August 20, 1936, he gave a sworn testimony stating: “From my investigation I find that the said Charles Luciano was resident and had his principal place of business in the county of New York, state of New York, during the year 1934 and that for the said year 1934 he had a net income of $20,000, upon which said income, with intent to evade the payment of a tax, he willfully, unlawfully, and fraudulently failed to render, verify, and file an income tax return; and further unlawfully, willfully, and fraudulently failed to pay the income tax which was due thereon, with intent to evade the payment of the said tax … .” These accusations hung over Luciano if he dared to challenge the decision of the court, but Luciano had nothing to lose. He was already in jail, effectively for the rest of his life, and he would consider anything to get out.
NAZIS IN NEW YORK
“T
he whole thing was a frame-up,” said Meyer Lansky, twisting the truth to show his support for his closet crime associate. “Dewey had decided to get Lucky Luciano and the only way he could do it was through the girls. They built up a phony case against him and everybody must have known that the girls were lying. They had been told exactly what to say. I never believed a word of it, and nobody who knew Charlie believed it either. But because of his reputation and a hostile judge, the jury was prepared to believe anything.”
Lansky shrank away even further from the spotlight and concentrated on building his gambling empire in Florida and Havana, Cuba, both places that were developing into profitable tourist industries. Lansky ensured that Luciano continued to receive his cut of the profits made by the Mob and invested them alongside his own.
With Luciano confined to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, an isolated maximum-security prison near the
Canadian border, Thomas Dewey scouted around for more gangsters to prosecute. Ice-cold killer Vito Genovese shed few tears over Luciano’s imprisonment and, according to Nick Gentile, was quick off the mark to suggest that an election be called to select the new head of their crime family. As its second-in-command, he obviously considered himself well placed for the job, but Dewey had other plans for him. The prosecutor linked him to the murder of a small-time hoodlum called Ferdinand Boccia in 1934 and, with enough evidence against him for an indictment, Genovese cheated the law by fleeing to Fascist Italy in 1937. He was never part of the Sicilian Mafia attacked by the Fascists, so he managed to make close contacts with Mussolini’s regime and set up a criminal network, including drug-smuggling routes, that would serve him very well during World War II.
Dewey next went after union racketeer Louis Lepke, forcing him into hiding. He was also wanted for narcotics smuggling, and the FBI managed to persuade other mobsters that it was against their own interests to shield him. From jail Luciano concurred, and Frank Costello arranged for Lepke to give himself up to the FBI in August 1939 by convincing him that the Mob had swung a deal with Hoover. It was nonsense and the less-than-bright Lepke was sent down for fourteen years. Dewey added a further thirty years to that sentence and Lepke was eventually executed for the murder of a garment industry trucker—the only top mobster ever to receive the death sentence. Mafiosi have a ruthless history of using law enforcement to rid them of troublesome rivals.
When Longy Zwillman was called in for an interview by the FBI, he didn’t hold back on his views about Dewey. He said that Lepke had remained a fugitive for so long because he distrusted the New York prosecutor. “It is known in the underworld,” said the FBI report, quoting Zwillman, that Dewey “framed ‘Lucky’ Luciano in the White Slave Traffic case; that from his knowledge of Luciano and from the knowledge of all persons known to him,
Luciano at no time dealt in white slavery. Zwillman stated that in numerous other cases it is known to the underworld that Dewey framed them for his own political glory.”
Frank Costello was untouched by Dewey’s assaults. “He couldn’t touch me because I was legit,” he later said. What that really meant was that he could not be linked to any racket within Dewey’s jurisdiction in New York. As far as the authorities were concerned, his main source of income came from slot machines in Louisiana—moved there because of La Guardia’s attack on them in New York. With Genovese out of the way in Fascist Italy, this lack of attention allowed Costello to move quietly but firmly into the position of senior Mob boss. His connections in political and legal circles were unparalleled, and his discretion ensured he maintained a good reputation among the five Mafia families. He was close to Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Albert Anastasia, and he kept in touch with Luciano in prison, passing on his orders to the underworld.
Thomas Dewey eventually benefited from his formidable crime-busting reputation by becoming governor of New York in 1942. He proved to be a popular politician and was elected to two more terms as governor. He would later stand as a Republican presidential candidate three times, but his youth counted against him in wartime—the nation preferred an older man to lead them against their enemies. Although an infamous headline, proclaiming falsely that “Dewey Defeats Truman,” did appear in the
Chicago Tribune
following the close presidential race of 1948.
 
 
Life in Dannemora was unpleasant for Luciano. Not only was it bitterly cold and strictly run—dubbed “Siberia”—it was a long way from New York City, making it difficult for his Mob associates to visit him.
Little Davie Petillo, Luciano’s codefendant in 1936, was also in Dannemora and formed a gang of Italian criminals. They fought other inmates, stabbing and beating them. Luciano stayed
out of the fighting, but in a tense recreation yard confrontation stepped in to bring an end to the conflict. Petillo swung at him with a baseball bat. Another convict defended Luciano and punched Petillo to the ground. Petillo was sent to solitary and Luciano’s brokered peace between the prison gangs remained as long as Luciano was there.
John Resko was a fellow inmate who later described Luciano’s impact on the prison community. “Life in prison picked up tempo after the arrival of Luciano and his partners,” he recalled. “Cons and guards were constantly planning accidental meetings with Lucky. Involved were curiosity, a desire to enhance prestige, or a plea for aid. Everyone around Luciano was approached at one time or another to intercede, to introduce, to pass on information.”
Generally, he was called Lucky by fellow cons and guards. His friends knew him as Charlie.
“Though other convicts, with less influence and less cash, availed themselves of special privileges,” continued Resko, “wearing outside shirts and tailor-made trousers, having special meals in their cells and hired help, Luciano for one reason or another refused all such favors. The psychology was excellent. He was never pointed out as a big shot because he wore a white shirt or had a guy cleaning out his cell. He was one of the boys. Just another con.”
Despite this apparent modesty, money continued to flow into Luciano’s coffers on the outside, thanks to Lansky’s diligence, and he used it to fund his legal team and their case for a retrial. In early 1937, it looked as though they might be getting somewhere.
Affidavits came to the trial judge from witnesses stating they had testified falsely at the trial. Their recantations came as newly discovered evidence and completely validated the application for a retrial. On January 26, 1937, Cokie Flo Brown stood in a California law office and testified before a notary public for Los Angeles County.
“I was in very bad physical condition,” she said of her original testimony. “I don’t think I was even able to think at the time.” As a heroin addict, she would have testified to almost anything in order to alleviate her suffering.
“On May 5, 1936, I was arrested for soliciting on the streets,” she continued, “and was convicted on May 12, 1936, and at the time I testified, I was waiting sentence on that crime. There were also pending against me three other charges in which I was a fugitive from justice. One charge was possessing of drugs, a second, the possession of a hypodermic needle, and the third, of maintaining a disorderly house.” Flo Brown declared that the idea for the garage meeting testimony about Luciano came from Mildred Curtis, Tommy the Bull’s girlfriend, and she made it up, as well as the Chinese restaurant conversations in which Luciano famously said he wanted to set up brothels like A&P stores. All of it was fabricated, she claimed.
To counter this allegation, Dewey was forced to bring back some of the girls from the trial to testify that they had told the truth about Luciano’s involvement with the vice business, despite being terrified of mobster retribution.
“After we had given Mr. Dewey’s office our testimony,” said Thelma Jordan, “we told the district attorney that after we testified on the stand, we would be in fear of our lives and we had in fact been threatened by Ralph Liguori in Mr. Dewey’s office … . Mary Morris told me that the Luciano Mob had threatened to torture or kill both of us. I told Judge McCook and Mr. Dewey’s office of this conversation. Mr. Dewey’s office then agreed to raise the money to send us out of the country.”
Dewey was compelled to give his own extensive testimony on the motives and process behind his prosecution case. He denied his office was out to get Luciano.
“Prior to the arrest and testimony given by these witnesses,” he explained, “we had no evidence of Luciano’s direct connection with this racket; we had made no effort to locate him and
did not even know where he was. Toward the end of March, however, the evidence was such that I felt it was my duty to represent the case to the grand jury and attempt to locate Luciano. This was done. After some undercover investigation, it was reported to me that he was either in Miami, Florida, or Hot Springs, Arkansas, having given up his apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria and fled from New York shortly after the murder of Dutch Schultz in October 1935.”
No special inducements were offered to the witnesses, insisted Dewey, except for protection from underworld figures.
“It is impossible to picture the fear expressed by almost every witness in this case at the prospect of testifying against these defendants,” he said. “Petillo had a reputation as a desperate killer. Wahrman [Abe Heller] and Liguori were widely known for various acts of violence. Tommy Pennochio, alias the Bull, was believed to have murdered a narcotic peddler who had turned state’s evidence in the federal courts a short time before the arrest in this case, and at the time of his arrest there was found in his pocket, written in pencil, a careful account of the date of arrest, date of release, date of assault and hospitalization, date of death and date of burial of that narcotic peddler who had been murdered.”
Dewey rejected the claim that Flo Brown was in an especially weakened condition when she testified, saying that under the most exhaustive cross-examination she performed very well and her recollection never failed her. “I said at that time that it was my opinion that Florence Brown and Mildred Balitzer were the two most intelligent women in the entire group and also that each had intimate knowledge of the criminal underworld.”
Dewey admitted that after the trial he was approached by moviemakers from Warner Bros. looking for inside material on the trial. “I told them that I personally would not in any way participate in such an activity. I would not permit, if I could help it, any dramatization of the Luciano trial as I considered it unfit for
dramatization.” But he did recommend they talk to Brown and Balitzer. “I also told them that both of these women had repeatedly said that they were going to go straight ‘if it killed them’ after this trial.”
Several of the prostitute witnesses were invited to Hollywood to appear as themselves in movies rushed out to capitalize on the publicity of the trial, including
Missing Witnesses
in 1937 and
Smashing the Rackets
in 1938. Warner Bros. made
Marked Woman
in 1937, their own version of the story with Bette Davis playing a Flo Brown character, while Humphrey Bogart starred as the crusading DA and the Neapolitan-born Eduardo Ciannelli played Johnny Vanning—the Luciano-like mobster.
Despite the recantations of his chief witnesses, Dewey made his argument well, and the case for a retrial was dismissed. In 1938, the case was revisited again by five judges. In their report, they believed the case had been effectively proven. “The appellant Luciano took the stand in his own behalf and testified that he did not know any of the defendants except Betillo [
sic
]. In this, he was contradicted not only by the women witnesses, but by employees of the two different hotels.
“This evidence cogently proves Luciano’s connection with this nefarious enterprise,” concluded the judges. “His position as head of this Combination did not bring him in direct contact with the victims of this scheme, and he displayed an anxiety that his name be not too openly associated with the bonding enterprise. Thus the evidence against him is not so easily available as it was against some of those lower in the organization, but the evidence produced against him is amply sufficient to warrant the verdict of guilty against him.”
The sentence was not overly harsh, either. All the defendants received shorter sentences than the law allowed. “In other words, they got less than they might have gotten.” However, only four ofof the five judges affirmed the judgment. The fifth dissented on the ground “there were material and prejudicial errors committed
during the trial which cannot be overlooked, and that the defendants were tried for a crime with which they were not charged in the indictment.” This dissension was not strong enough cause for a retrial.
It looked like it was the end of the line for Luciano. His legal team had failed to get him out of jail and there would be no more appeals. It must have been his most depressing moment—realizing he could be imprisoned in Dannemora for the rest of his life. Leo Katcher, the biographer of Arnold Rothstein, visited Luciano in prison shortly after he got the news of his failed final appeal. He told the mobster that he looked surprisingly good for his time in jail.
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “Lots of work, lots of exercise. No late hours. Just what the doctor ordered. God, how I hate it.”
He had a job in the laundry and revealed the calluses on his hands. He still claimed the witnesses had lied against him in the trial and pinned his only hope of getting out of jail on this truth coming out.
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